Arrivals - something of a departure

Over the course of the last six days I’ve been given what I wished for – and it turned out to be (as you’d expect) not too pretty.

  Essentially I’ve been off work and holed up in my study, doing nothing but composing music, for the forthcoming drama ‘Arrivals’, which opens at the Crescent Arts Centre this week.

  The show, which explores interesting cross currents in the multi-cultural life of Northern Ireland, consists of five short pieces, written by a group of hugely talented writers from here and follows the fortunes of a cast of characters criss-crossing the globe to land here in search of love, marriage, refuge, work, inspiration - or just a new beginning.

  The plays, written by Shannon Yee, James Meredith, Paul McMahon, Deirdre Cartmill and John Morrison, were conceived and are directed by Andrea. For more information, visit the Terra Nova website at www.terranovaproductions.net.

  Most of the composition process has been huge fun, but some of it has of course been like having my teeth pulled, one molar each day. Walking in the door and seeing the guy there waiting, with the pliers.

  I had thought at the outset that nothing could be sweeter than having a concentrated amount of time to knuckle down and produce some music. But I had forgotten that when I normally make music, I follow a set of rules – there are lyrics, choruses, spaces for guitar solos. A structure that I can bend and twist any way I want.

  But this time I start with a number of canvases with outlines already sketched on them – it has to be something that suggests disquiet, says Andrea, or something that sounds restless and unresolved. With no lyrics to suggest disquiet or restlessness, I have to put my faith in the sound the instruments make.

  So the finished pieces are strange bedfellows – one of them sounds like a powerpop band in a small club. Another sounds like a Zen master playing the piano. Another sounds like Talking Heads. And one sounds like me smacking a variety of glass objects in my kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, and blowing into bottles.

  (This last one was interesting – to create the desired effect, I struck all kinds of glasses and jars alongside a drum loop. And then I blew across the top of a variety of bottles in the kitchen. When the process was over, I was left with a residue across my lower lip that was a mix of vodka, baileys, balsamic vinegar, sloe gin and fish sauce. Nice.) Of course, the pieces are all written to accompany scene change movement, so let’s hope they work.

  I should come clean and say this is not the first time I’ve written instrumental music. A couple of years ago I was commissioned to write pieces for an exhibition of paintings by Maurice Orr. I learned some valuable lessons during that process – every time I brought music to him he would ask for less. Take the harmonica out. Can we take out the percussion? Let’s lose the guitar.

  ‘Sorry... Er, lose the guitar?'

  A couple of the pieces ended up with just the sound of surf and a few broken piano chords here and there. But it worked. It was all about atmospheres.

  This is a similar process – one of the plays is about faiths meeting and clashing and meshing, so I played a piano piece that I hope sounds like two pianos speaking to each other.

  If you visit the ReverbNation player right HERE, you can download a couple of the tracks absolutely free.

  But if you’d like to see them in their proper context – in other words, setting up the atmosphere for the piece of drama to follow, come along to see the show at the following venues.

FEBRUARY 12-15 at 8pm nightly (and matinees Feb 13 at 1.30pm and Feb 15 at 2.30pm), BELFAST: Crescent Arts Centre

Call (028) 9024 2338 or visit www.crescentarts.org 

FEBRUARY 19 at 8pm, NEWTOWNARDS: Ards Arts Centre

Call (028) 9181 0803 or visit www.ards-council.gov.uk 

FEBRUARY 20 at 8pm, COLERAINE: Riverside Theatre

Call (028) 7012 3123 or visit www.riversidetheatre.org.uk 

FEBRUARY 21 at 8pm, ARMAGH: The Marketplace Theatre

Call (028 3752 1821 or visit www.marketplacearmagh.com 

FEBRUARY 22 at 8pm, DOWNPATRICK, Down Arts Centre

Call (028) 4461 0747 or visit www.downartscentre.com

What I want to be when I grow up

It's Careers Insight Day at the girls grammar school, so I have my little name badge and a table in the corner of the gymnasium. And all the teenagers who want to be rock & roll stars will flock to me, right? And gather around my feet to hear my words of wisdom?

Not quite...

As always with these things, for every bright spark, for very shining-eyed little Sylvia Plath angel with a notebook full of terrifying biro sketches and poems, there are thirteen other sleepy-eyed girls who look like they wish they were back in bed watching TV.

What is there to say to kids this age about careers, anyway? It's hard, hard work, girls. I want to make important pronouncements like: there are no easy ways to be rich and comfortable. The trick is not to make compromises with your life. Don't ever say, 'this will do'. But it's hard to make that point to 14-year-olds. They're being asked to make Big Grown Up Decisions about career choices – at 14, I didn’t even know what I wanted for breakfast.

By and large they regard me silently, like a small herd of beautiful, curious young deer that have sneaked in through a hole in the fence. When I finish talking and invite questions, their big eyes swim around the room and they look at the floor, or their nails, or the wooden climbing bars behind my head. And their cheeks redden ever so slightly in soundless embarrassment.

One of them bravely eases her hand up and reads one of the ‘suggested questions’ from the Careers Advice sheet in front of her.

'What would you consider to be the starting salary for a singer songwriter?'

And I think of Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan… and all of them making scratches on the paper, playing their first D Major chord - and having to start somewhere.

'The starting salary...' I say, 'is zero pounds a year.'

Me and Mr. Hemingway

I just finished reading Paul Hendrickson’s biography-that's-not-really-a-biography, Hemingway’s Boat.: Everything in Life He Loved and Lost. And like all good biographies (even those that back away slowly when referred to as biographies), it drove me back to the bookshelves, to read the work of the subject.

And the work is a patchy business, it has to be said, with prizes reserved for a few of the short stories, Fiesta, The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms and A Moveable Feast.

Reading Hemingway has been like trying on old clothes from years ago you once thought looked really cool. An enjoyable experience but perhaps not considered fashionable anymore.

Hendrickson’s book hints at conflicted sexuality – not a new subject for Hemingway scholars. Its main point is that the writer’s relationship with his boat Pilar was the strong undercurrent below his best years. And the more landlocked and removed he got from his boat and the Caribbean, the more lost at sea he became.

By the time I was eleven and I got to the big library at Coleraine Inst, I gazed up at the tall shadowy shelves and was already aware that Hemingway was one of the big 20th Century names you were Supposed to Have Read. One of the authors known only by their surnames, like generals in some complicated war overseas – Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Forster.

When pocket money allowed, I had taken to stopping on my way home every now and then at Coleraine Book Shop in Stone Row, a neat oasis of orderly shelves of second hand stock (long since gone). And it was in there that I picked up a copy of Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises (it still has the pencilled price in the back – 40p).

All the world’s a stage, and in my early teens I had sketched out a role for myself as someone with aspirations to be a writer, to be an unrequited lover, carrying my broken heart around the world with a tragic nobility that women would find irresistible.

In other words, I was a sitting duck for Fiesta by the time I read it – I was completely swept away by the doomed expatriate romance and the exotic Parisian and Spanish backdrops. I don’t think I ever quite got over it. That’s the mark of a really good book, I suppose. Some part of it enters you and takes up residence and never leaves.

Of course, the myth of Hemingway is irresistible, even as a source of ridicule. Hendrickson’s biography thankfully doesn’t buy any of the macho Hemingway industry bull. To me, though, it was more the image of the writer that I swallowed like a baited hook. The locomotive power of a man working, pressing the words into the page and getting his work done.

And this is what has drawn me back from the bookshelves to the desk with this little passage from the breathless and beautiful epilogue to Death in the Afternoon. I first read it years ago, and now that writing and creativity have become such a girder running through who I am, I re-read it and share it with a re-found sense of dedication and inspiration.

I dedicate it as a blessing to any of you reading this who are involved in your own creative journey. Take heart – and get your work done.

HEMINGWAY ‘The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after. Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it’s made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it.’

Down to the river

IT’S true – there are few things better designed to fray your nerves than opening the door on a wild night and finding a policeman standing there. A million thoughts crash through your head at once – but it’s okay: He’s here to remind us of the flood warning. Parts of Sydenham are at risk when the high tide meets high wind and heavy rain at midday tomorrow, he says. A perfect little storm that could see us evacuated if things get really bad.

Evacuated? Let’s be honest - that’s not a word that comes up often in conversation.

I spend the rest of the evening trying to decide whether to actually be worried or not. I reason – probably correctly – that our house is pretty elevated (the street rises quite a bit from the far end to us), and that we have two additional steps up to the front door.

I stomp around the house all evening, looking out the windows and telling myself this is the kind of thing that happens to other people. And yet every now and then I think about throwing some underwear and pyjamas into a rucksack, and moving some precious stuff up a floor. I keep checking Twitter and making sure all my hand-held devices are fully charged - and making sure I have a good book handy, in case I have to spend a night sleeping in a primary school assembly hall or something.

The next morning is windy but dry, and there’s a definite edge to the morning – people are out in their front gardens talking to each other. As midday approaches, emergency vehicles go down Park Avenue in the direction of the Connswater River. I quietly take the car and park it a couple of streets away, on higher ground. Not everyone is willing to take it so seriously. A neighbour texts me to say he's coming home at lunchtime, 'to put down a couple of sheets of kitchen roll just in case'.

Andrea and I decide to take a look, and we’re surprised to find as we arrive at the river that about two hundred people have decided to do the same. There’s a kind of carnival atmosphere down there, as people stand and watch the Connswater – swollen dangerously high and looking kind of cold and evil, tickling the underside of the motorway bridge.

Local politicians are here looking concerned. The police and emergency services are keeping an eye on things and people are taking photographs of each other. It’s like a rock festival. I almost expect someone to start selling hot dogs. All around us are streets and streets of houses with sandbags piled up at the door – their gardens are a good six feet below the level of the sandbags, and if the water level rises another foot, the river will come down the embankment in seconds and head straight for their front doors.

As 12.15 passes, Andrea and I seem to have an impression that the water level is dropping, almost perceptibly as we watch it. In any event, we decide to call it a day and go back home. On the way, we are passed by people going in the opposite direction – mums and dads bringing their kids down to see the flood. It’s remarkable in a way, this appetite for any kind of experience - people rushing to see a disaster even as it potentially heads towards them. There are families walking down Park Avenue with drinks and sweets. The police turn away a couple of massive all-terrain vehicles, with mums and dads and the kids in the back, hoping they could drive down to Victoria Park and maybe watch the sandbags as they give way. It’s like we’ve seen a million apocalypse movies and we want to have our own close shave with a disaster, even a little one.

(When I get back to the house, I find the rucksack that I had thrown on the bed but didn’t get round to packing, and it makes me feel a little foolish. I throw it back on top of the wardrobe, before anybody notices)

Songblog: Broken in Advance

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Another one of those songs I come out with now and then about the anxieties of getting older and how we’re crossing shaky ground. The song almost didn’t get finished – I wrote the first draft while going through a very angry few weeks, and it was full of unpleasant sentiments.

I think I completed the missing verse the night before recording it, so it was close to the wire. Despite all the anxieties of the central character, I like to think he finds a shot at redemption in the last few lines, so it’s not too dark and full of despair. Anyway, during the recent tour dates, some of the lines have actually been attracting a giggle or two from the audience, so it must be OK...

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – vocals and guitars; Clive Culbertson – bass; Peter McKinney – drums; John McCullough – piano

Broken in advance::

In the deepest, darkest part of the night,

you lie awake and you worry about things that you can’t put right.

And if sleep is a river of dreams,

you’re headed back upstream,

where the fish come and look at your toes

and they take a bite.

There are joyriders watching you from the dark.

They know your house and your car

and the place that you always park.

They missed the boom but they got the crash,

and they’d love to redistribute your cash -

and you hold your keys so tight

that they leave a mark.

Maybe they were born to it -

maybe they never stood a chance.

Their hearts were broken in advance.

It seems so much harder than it did way back at the start.

And you worry ’bout the toll that it takes on your wounded heart.

You just hope it wins back what it loses,

between the teethmarks and the bruises

And all the big ideas that used to seem so smart.

Everybody’s on the make but me, I must have

missed my lucky chance.

My heart was broken in advance.

Well you wake in the middle of the night with your pulse rate thumping:

This isn’t the dream about falling, this is the one about jumping.

You’re lying there wide awake,

and your heart’s just about to break -

when the sun comes up, and you remember to be glad for something.

Songblog: The Heart Says 'You Never Know Me'

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Pulling the songs together for this album, I wanted to write something for a person I knew who was going through a hard time – a time when the head and the heart were not quite on speaking terms.

There was a sense that the heart kept pulling towards situations the head knew were a mistake. And the idea came to me that the heart would have its own identity, and would know better, could speak aloud, and say simply – ‘you never know me’. The chords and melody had been around for a while – I wrote them in London, and all I had for a lyric was ‘you never know me’.

I didn’t realise until I thought about my friend that in fact it was the voice of his heart. Sometimes moments like that are like a key turning in a lock, or a coin dropping down into a slot – sometimes, when you connect an expressive idea with a specific person, you can almost hear the bolts sliding back and the song walks through the open door. I hope that doesn’t sound too pretentious, but it’s like being in the dark with the lights coming up, like coming up to the surface.

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – vocals and guitars; Clive Culbertson – bass; Peter McKinney – drums; John McCullough – piano; John Fitzpatrick - violin

The Heart Says: 'You Never Know Me':​

Trusting in your high wire shoes from grace to grace.

Practising your broken smile from face to face.

Carrying your rotten luck from place to place.

Oh, in the dead of night your heart will tell you:

‘You never know, you never know, you never know me’.

Love will make you leave your home, and change your name;

Make you bend or break the rules of every game.

The people that you leave will never be the same.

Oh, in the dead of night your heart will tell you:

‘You never know, you never know, you never know me’.

Desire is the flame that melts you together

And she says you’re the one, but your heart knows you better.

‘You never know, you never know, you never know me’.

Songblog: All the Empty Pockets of Ireland

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This song came out in about 20 minutes – I have no idea what sparked it off, apart from the ‘empty pockets’ line, which is partly borrowed from the poet Antony Raftery. As so many times before, I was fooling around with an Open G tuning and the little John Prine-ish introduction motif seemed to emerge on its own.

The rest of the lyrics seem to be have been a reaction to the ongoing global recession and in particular the awful state of the economy in Ireland – and what has been lost.

As for the last verse, it’s a rumination on the awful year of bad health my parents had just gone through at the time of writing. My mum and dad were great dancers. As a child, I remember watching them dancing at family parties. When they began to jive, other members of the family would gradually stop dancing and just watch. They had never taken any lessons or anything, they just knew how to do it, and they moved like the expression of pure physical joy that dancers give off like a light when it’s done right.

A circle would form and they would inhabit the space and fill it with an unconscious expression of delight. As my father spun my mother, he would often let his left hand float upwards and flutter it, like a pianist playing a boogie-woogie trill. As a child, I may have believed that at times like this, they actually would leave the floor and rise upwards like Chagall’s lovers.

I remember watching them with huge pride from the edge of childhood, from the side of dancefloors in dusty hotel function rooms, my eyes gritty from lack of sleep and my teeth sticky with Coca Cola. And all I have to do is put on some Chuck Berry and close my eyes, and they’re still there.

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – vocals, guitars and banjos; Neil Martin - cello

All the Empty Pockets of Ireland:​

I had a dream that the people came back

to the dancehalls,

and they waltzed and they jived

beneath the mirror balls.

And with the music in their heads,

they went back home to their beds

and they woke up hopeful.

In this dancehall, all the millionaires

stood regretting.

And they leaned against the walls

and started sweating.

And all the sweetest girls in town

consistently turned their advances down,

and they went home lonely.

Baby I’m going to hit the road,

but I won’t be long.

I’ll be home before you even know I’m gone.

And I’ll wash my face and smile

and I’ll sing my song

to all the empty pockets of Ireland.

In this dream I’m ten years old,

and I’m up way too late.

And as my mother and my father dance,

they start to levitate.

And as the people stop and stare,

they catch each other in mid-air

and I don’t want to wake up.

Baby I’m going to hit the road,

but I won’t be long.

I’ll be home before you even know I’m gone.

And I’ll wash my face and smile

and I’ll sing my song

to all the empty pockets of Ireland.

Songblog: Bed and Breakfast

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On October 10, 2011, I was invited to take part in an outside broadcast of the Ralph McLean Radio show for Radio Ulster, down at the Bronte Centre in Rathfriland in County Down.

It was a bitterly cold night, but a lovely experience – Matt McGinn, Ruth Colley, Isobel Anderson, Gareth Dunlop… It was a great show, but I was glad to be heading home to the warmth, and on the way home, the first line just popped into my head as I was driving – ‘headlights on the road, and the moon up above. I drive between the lights to be with the one I love’.

I knew almost immediately that I was in straight-ahead love song territory, so I was determined not to be too clever. The only concession was when I started using the paired words – I love you hot & cold, I love you thick & thin… And without even thinking, the next pairing that came into my head was ‘bed & breakfast’, and then I couldn’t resist ‘going out & staying in’.

The chord pattern over the verses is a I-Vim-IV-V pattern that has been used a million times before. In my head I was thinking ‘Stay (Just a Little Bit Longer) and even Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Oh Diane’.

It was the first track that we recorded for the album, and when I heard Linley Hamilton and Meilana Gillard’s horn parts, I knew I was going to have fun. It was good to put a big slide guitar solo on the record, too...

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – vocals and guitars; Clive Culbertson – bass; Peter McKinney – drums; John McCullough – piano and organ; Linley Hamilton – trumpet; Meilana Gillard – saxophone

Bed and Breakfast:​

Headlights on the road, and the moon up above:

I drive between the lights, to be with the one I love.

And if I was a DJ, with my own late show,

I would dedicate to you every love song I know.

CHORUS:

Cause I love you hot and cold,

I love you thick and thin.

I love you bed and breakfast,

going out and staying in.

There’s a checkpoint up ahead – and I tell them with a smile,

if they take away my wheels I’d walk home the sixty miles.

CHORUS

First thing in the morning, and last thing at night

I need to hear my baby’s voice to know it’s going to be all right.

Songblog: The Road to Fivemiletown

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I’m always trying to make people happy.

Somehow I can’t stand the thought that I’ll tell a story with an unhappy ending and not find offer shred of hope in the process somewhere. As a songwriter, I’ve always tried to find the light at the end of the tunnel. I laboured over this song for weeks, without successfully being able to rescue the character from the quicksand of her own life and unhappiness. Onstage I introduce it as a ‘little slice of South Tyrone gothic’.

And people seem to love it.

As a character study it seems to work – maybe everyone knows an aunt or a cousin who made these choices in life and ended up stuck, trapped in a loveless dead end of a life. Anyway, it goes down well in concert, and I’ve had all kinds of kind comments about it online, so it shows how people love a little tale of misery in their lives now and then.

The origin of this one is a mystery to me – the guitar figure right at the start was the first part. I remember sitting on the edge of the bed playing this over and over until it was properly under my fingers. As for inspiration, I think the work of John McGahern may have rubbed off on me more than I thought – there seems to be a touch of the Amongst Women about it, that sense of being stranded alone and unloved in a rural landscape.

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – guitars and vocals; Peter McKinney – drums; Clive Culbertson – bass; John McCullough – drums; Neil Martin - cello

The Road to Fivemiletown:​

She was the youngest of four daughters,

and she married way too fast,

in the days when vows were iron -

and you had to make them last.

But her father was a bruiser,

and he bruised them twice a week.

She couldn’t live the life her mother had,

and turn the other cheek.

So when she turned sixteen, she started counting off the days

- til she could find herself a husband, and finally get away.

He was a farmer with big farmer’s hands,

and she met him at a dance.

She set her sights upon him,

and he never stood a chance.

She thought the price of being choosy

was to live upon the shelf,

and she thought he’d do the job

as well as anybody else.

And when they both stood at the altar, he said he’d never let her down -

he had a farm and forty acres, either side of the road to Fivemiletown.

That first year the river burst its banks,

and half the countryside was drowned.

all the food that he had planted

lay and rotted in the ground.

He’d come home at night exhausted,

and lie dead between the sheets,

and she’d lie all night and listen to

the roaring of the beasts,

and it was dark - as dark as being lost and never found.

You wouldn’t even know your eyes were closed or open on the road to Fivemiletown.

Once upon a time she thought the world

would be hers to wrap her arms around.

Now she makes the bed, and lies back down.

She drew a disappearing heart, when there was no-one else around,

on a steamed-up kitchen window - looking out on the road to Fivemiletown.

Songblog: Most People Are a Pain in the Ass

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I had this song knocking around the house for a few days and had convinced myself that I couldn’t do anything with it – the ‘be a good boy’ urge in me said that I couldn’t possibly say something like that in a song.

But of course, since the Sex Pistols issued ‘Anarchy in the UK’ you can say anything you want in a song. Once I had the first line: If life was a party, then you wish you could leave them at home’, I knew I would have to repeat the couplet and get meaner each time, culminating with ‘If life was a journey, you’d slash their tyres in the driveway’.

I’ve sung it a few times at parties where there were people who really do fit the description and I have winced a little and avoided looking at them before singing that particular line.

But most of the time people take it in good humour. I played it at Ards Arts Centre one night, and afterwards, someone in the audience shouted: ‘let me know when that’s available as a ringtone’. John Fitzpatrick is particularly lovely on violin on this one.

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – vocals and guitars; Clive Culbertson – bass; Peter McKinney – drums; John McCullough – piano; John Fitzpatrick - violin

LYRICS:​

I need to set some boundaries.

They keep knocking on my door,

and tucking in the tail of my shirt.

And I negotiate my personal space:

They keep walking through walls and

they bug me when I’m trying to work.

Well, the ones that you love and

who love you, you got to keep them around.

But just about everybody else can get lost,

that’s what I’ve found...

Most people are a pain in the ass.

If life was a party then you wish you could leave them at home.

They keep tugging on your sleeve.

Even when they’re dead, they won’t leave you alone.

And we’ve got experts in every subject.

Cooking pasta, and how to save a fortune

on the cost of your heating.

And they boast about the price of their houses,

what they said to the boss and what

they’re going to bring up at the meeting.

Well I try to be cool at the party

while they waste my precious time.

But every time they open their mouths,

I just want to drink a lot more wine.

Most people are a pain in the ass.

If life was a movie, you’d kill them in the opening scene.

They keep tugging at your sleeve,

you try to change the channel

but their face keeps coming up on every screen.

Well I try to be patient and I try to be kind.

But with all the ears in the world tonight,

how come you keep bending mine?

Most people are a pain in the ass.

If life was a journey you’d slash their tyres in the driveway.

They keep tugging on your sleeve,

even when you sleep they won’t leave you alone.

Songblog: Polaroids and Postcards

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I wrote this in Canada one morning in July of last year – the same morning I took this picture, actually.

The little guitar figure had come first, a few days before. I was playing the Tanglewood guitar in dropped D for a few days, and the lick just seemed to fall under my fingers. I played it over and over for about three days solid.

On one of those afternoons, Andrea and her mother decided to open some of the cardboard boxes that had been in storage in the basement of the house for over a decade, and there were deep emotions circulating – old family pictures and letters and artefacts were coming out for the first time in many years. A lot of ghosts moving through the rooms, and quite a bit of conversation about the immigrant experience.

The Montgomery family had come over in the late 19th century from Scotland. So the idea of leaving home and writing back to your family was in my blood at the time.

All that year, my father had been copying old family photographs – and every few days I would call to visit and he would have copied another family picture for me. One of the pictures he showed me was of my Aunt Bridget, who emigrated to Australia in the early 60s. There was a picture of her standing outside a rural Post Office holding a baby. And in the background there was just... endless miles of white desert. Nothing as far as the eye could see.

On the opposite page of the family album was the telegram that she had sent home to her mother in Pates Lane in Coleraine, to mark the fact that she had crossed the Equator. We all have family stories like this, I imagine. And it strikes me that the idea of travelling that distance is kind of commonplace now. Back then it must have seemed almost like a death in the family – to lose your loved ones to the wind.

I love John McCullough’s piano playing on this.

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – vocals and guitars; Clive Culbertson – bass; Peter McKinney – drums; John McCullough – piano

LYRICS:​

We were both named for Catholic saints,

but it never does us any good.

We say our prayers each day and we walk out

into the deep, dark woods.

We’re kids of a restless generation,

who prayed that life could be better.

They packed their bags and caught the boats, and got kind of

lost out in the weather.

CHORUS:

And it’s happy and sad,

all these Polaroids and postcards.

Good and bad, all the news they send back home.

And you wonder how these hearts can go the distance,

even though we’ve been down this road many times.

Australia 1962:

Our uncle and his brand new wife.

Behind them the land goes on for miles,

without another sign of life.

From Vancouver, New York and Boston;

Philadelphia, New South Wales:

Black and whites of birthday parties,

and smiling little nephews come Air Mail.

CHORUS

Songblog: Things Fall Apart

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The idea of things falling to bits was one of the key themes of the album. Things getting worn out, blasted by the weather and by time and erosion. This song was trying to express some of that, but I got distracted along the way, talking about New York and Smithfield Market and so on.

There are several true adventures here – the ‘dead hotel’ was the old Fawcetts Royal Hotel in Portrush. I rehearsed in there with one of many bands I tried to start in my teens. It was a wonderful, spooky old place, still partly furnished but abandoned. As I seem to recall, we set up our gear in the dining room under the dusty chandeliers and played ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ by The Beatles for about three hours until our fingers were numb. We never actually made it far enough to have an actual gig, fortunately.

(I remember thinking about all the empty bedrooms upstairs and the creaking doors and dusty windows. The experience had a profound effect on me – I remember writing one short story based on these ‘abandoned hotel’ afternoons, and at least one forlorn little teenage unrequited love song)

And I did see Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes – at BB King’s Bar & Grill on 42nd street in New York City (left). I was in New York with a large party from Northern Ireland and I was the only old person among them who had HEARD of Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes (I thought, where have these people BEEN?). So I bought a ticket and sat there on my own and watched one of the greatest gigs I’ve ever seen.

And I did get stuck in Fermanagh once, during the bad floods of a couple of years back. Coming back from the Ardhowen Theatre after a show, the roads were underwater in so many places, and I was diverted so many times I ended up lost, driving past lakes that used to be fields, trying to get back to the motorway in the middle of the night with the petrol gauge swinging towards zero.

Musically, my dear friends Ronnie Greer (guitar) and John McCullough (piano) excel themselves on this one, I think.

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – vocals and guitars; Clive Culbertson – bass; Peter McKinney – drums; John McCullough – piano and keyboard; Ronnie Greer - guitar

LYRICS

I been to New York City,

I walked the boots right off my feet.

I saw Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes

play on 42nd street.

In a car on the New Jersey Turnpike,

I saw America after dark.

I’ve been up and down the road to hell,

trying to find a place to park

I been to Smithfield Market

but that just gave me the blues.

All those old LPs from your teenage years,

and the toys nobody used

I saw a mama look down at her little boy,

and the boy regard his mother.

There’s nothing worse than two generations

disappointed in each other.

Things fall apart, and you try to hold it all together.

You can throw your arms around it sometimes,

but nothing lasts forever.

I got locked in a dead hotel,

I was a ghost on the second floor.

I kicked my way out the fire escape,

I stole the key to a hundred doors.

I got chased by the flood.

I took a dirt road home,

I went looking for higher ground

in Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

Things fall apart, and you try to hold it all together.

You can throw your arms around it sometimes,

but nothing lasts forever.

Don’t read your old love letters,

you’ll feel a thousand years old.

Don’t visualize your broken heart being

left out in the cold:

That was a time of superstition,

people checked under their cars.

They stopped going out to dances,

and they avoided certain bars.​

Songblog: The Only Only Child in the World

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This song began life with a completely different title and a slightly different chord progression. But the feel was kind of similar. I had a set of lyrics almost finished, but they were a little whiny and I didn’t like the sentiments I was expressing.

So I kind of put it in a drawer and forgot about it for a while. Andrea and I were visiting a couple of very dear friends in February. I’m an only child, and my mother’s health was at a low point then, and I was feeling pretty wiped out. Our host plays a little guitar and he had a nice old Yamaha lying around his living room.

We were waiting for a cab to go out for dinner, and as so often happens in these situations, I picked up the instrument and was fooling around with the chord progression, while we talked. And I remember saying that my situation was not unique – I wasn’t ‘the only only child in the world’, after all.

To be honest, the minute I knew I had that phrase, a voice in my head told me I was going to make an album that year, despite my plans to take a year off. As for the sentiment, it’s all very autobiographical, I’m afraid. If it veers towards self-pity, I hope it comes back from the brink. I was trying to say that love is… the fuel in the tank. The energy that makes all things possible.

The recording was interesting. Despite recording the whole thing with horns, full band, backing vocals, sax solo etc etc, I ended up scrapping that version and reverting to the rough-round-the-edges demo that you hear here – me playing an old upright piano in need of a tune. We overdubbed the vocals and guitars at Clive’s studio, though. I’m very grateful to Clive for his patience. After all that work, I had to phone and tell him I hated it.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

I said, ‘I think I’ve fallen in love with the demo recording of me on an old out of tune upright piano in a storeroom at Flowerfield.’

Without hesitation, he said: ‘Bring the recording in – let’s dump it into the computer and redo the vocals with a proper mic.’

And we did an extra day – and I rediscovered the heart of the song. Listening to the big arrangement, it reminds me that sometimes more is actually less.

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – vocals, piano and guitars; Clive Culbertson – harmony vocals

LYRICS:

When real life tells you the score,

and the angels of destruction

come knocking on your door

and you lay down thinking you can choose

and when you wake up you’re

surrounded by the blues.

And you build your fortress walls high and strong,

but you can only hold them off for so long.

And you talk like you’re the only

only child in the world.

As a kid you made a world of your own.

You killed the long winter afternoons all alone.

With a box of plastic soldiers on the shelf,

you fought the Second World War all by yourself.

But now you’re older, and surrendering to doubt -

as the ammunition starts to run out.

You throw your hands up, like the only

only child in the world.

But did they wrap you with love?

(yes they did)

Warm blankets of love?

(every night and day)

Did they hold you tight in their arms,

all the way back home?

And nothing weighs you down like what you feel -

but you have to put your shoulder to the wheel,

and keep moving, like the only

only child in the world.​

A heartbreaking absence - RIP Mike Moloney

(A tribute to our friend, the late and very great Mike Moloney, who passed away suddenly last weekend - his funeral service takes place this Wednesday. If you'd like to read some more tributes to Mike, or contribute one of your own, log on to www.mikemoloney.net)

It’s almost impossible to accept that Mike is gone – he was a man with such lively, sparky presence that the word ‘absent’ just refuses to sit in the same sentence.

Andrea and I were late converts to the Cult of Mike, but of course once you join, you’re in for life. We met him through our dear friend Nuala, and were immediately hooked on his mixture of animated intelligence and twinkly, well-read charm. He was like Mark Twain meets Bugs Bunny.

The last time we met Mike was a couple of weeks ago in St. George’s Market in Belfast (where we would often run into each other). Andrea and I were queuing for coffee, and he came up silently behind us and put his knee in behind mine in an attempt to topple me.

As I staggered and remained upright, I turned around just in time to see him scampering – like a cartoon mouse – back to another queue, sniggering and waving bye bye.

Three days later I was running sound and lights for a presentation evening at Flowerfield Arts Centre, where I work. It was a presentation evening, aimed at celebrating the support from the local business community for the North West ‘200’ motorcycle races. Someone was showing a Powerpoint presentation – pictures of the high jinks that the motorcyclists would get up to during Race Week.

‘But there are some things even these daredevils won’t tackle’, he said – and brought up a slide of one of the riders standing beside Mike as he performed one of his pyrotechnics, flames leaping from his mouth. I remember chuckling with delight and recognition.

It seems fitting to me that the last thought I had of Mike was an image of him doing something superhuman. Breathing fire and defying the ordinary.

(on behalf of Andrea and I)

Songblog: St. Paul's 8th Floor Farewell Blues

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I have no idea what sparked this one off, or indeed who Saint Paul may be. I remember playing the guitar chord introduction late one night in the kitchen of the house we rented on Hillfoot Street in East Belfast, when I was on my own and Andrea was away somewhere.

​And the words ‘the last time I saw Saint Paul…’ came to me out of a bottle of red wine that was keeping me company. I liked the idea that St. Paul was someone you could have met a couple of months ago, someone you could be talking to your friends about… I had a hard time leaving the ending so open-ended, but the more I listened to it, the more I came to trust it. 'That's how we left it'.

One of my oldest friends came to see one of the shows recently, and he and I talked afterwards about the song. He said that he had a feeling that he knew who St. Paul was, but couldn't pin a name on him. And that was exactly the same kind of disembodied compassion that had driven the song to the surface, I think. It’s hard to tell sometimes. I might never work out who St. Paul is or was, but I love him just the same.

I think the 'block of flats' may have come from my own childhood - the first proper home that we had as a family was one of the maisonettes at Harpur's Hill. I remember very little about the time, as we only stayed there for a few years. I went up there yesterday and took this picture.

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – vocals and guitars; Clive Culbertson – bass; Peter McKinney – drums; John McCullough - piano

LYRICS:​

St. Paul’s 8th Floor Farewell Blues

The last time I saw Saint Paul,

he was living in a block of flats.

You could see the world for miles around.

He said, ‘there’s nothing worth the looking at.’

I thought, ‘he’s gone...

so long, so long. Come back now.’

The last time I saw Saint Paul,

he was refusing everybody’s calls.

He had a sign that said ‘Closing Down’

blu-tacked up on the kitchen wall.

He said, ‘I found it,

with demolition all around it.

That’s why I like it’.

My mother said ‘you should stay clear

of that damaged boy.

He’s been reducing you to tears for years and years.’

The last time I saw Saint Paul,

he was living on jam and bread.

He said, ‘I feel like just letting go.’

Then I reminded him of what we’d said.

He said, ‘I know...

but change the subject, or go.’

That’s how we left it.​

Sing Under the Bridges Songblog: Tell Me Something That I Don't Know

(Welcome to the song blog for the new album... Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting blogs on each of the songs, with some background information, details on musician’s credits, lyrics and a link to the track itself if you want to listen while you read. Please feel free to make a comment, and to share the posts with anyone you think might be interested!)

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This whole album seemed to be full of contrasts when I listened back to it – folk things, soul things, country things… I wondered what it would be like to turn it to your advantage, to make the songs zig and zag in different directions, take a tour through the genres, like the mid-period Beatles albums used to do.

So here we are – I thought the boldest thing would be to kick off with something that was completely unlike what had gone before.

Shortly after the MAC opened in Belfast, we went to see the wonderful Ponydance dance troupe (pictured above right) perform their show Straight to DVD, and roared and laughed our way through it (they’re great – they kind of redefine what modern dance means). But in the middle of it there was an old soul/jazz shuffle tune that they played which I adored.

I have no idea what it was, but I came home wanting to write and record something like that. Of course, all these big intentions get bent slightly out of shape as soon as you begin the recording process. But it was still a lot of fun, and I’m very pleased with the feel of the whole thing, and Linley Hamilton’s New Orleans trumpet solo in particular.

Lyrically, it’s a fairly straight-ahead little love song. I wanted to give something of the ‘glass half-full’ feel of our lives, I suppose. And I’m secretly very proud of that line: ‘Everytime I look in those big green eyes, I feel my leaky little boat capsize’.

(everytime we go to Canada, Andrea’s trying to get me into a canoe. I always tell her that I’m only used to getting into vessels that I can also drive me car onto and order a cooked breakfast). I’m also very proud that I wrote the horn parts for the song – I may be one of the slowest arrangers in the world, but I’m pleased with how this one turned out.

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – vocals and guitars; Clive Culbertson – bass; Peter McKinney – drums; John McCullough – piano; Linley Hamilton – trumpet; Meilana Gillard - saxophone

LYRICS:​

Tell Me Something That I Don’t Know

Sunshine hits the river:

a thousand flashbulbs pop in my face.

I’m caught walking with you on my arm -

it feels good.

So hold the front back and the back page,

and all the pages in the middle.

Small news in the big town,

it feels good.

My friends tell me not to let you go,

I say: ‘ha! Tell me something that I don’t know.’

Every time I look in those big green eyes,

I feel my leaky little boat capsize.

So hold tight to your paddle,

lose whatever weighs you down,

and sing under the bridges,

it feels good.

My friends tell me not to let you go,

I say: ‘ha! Tell me something that I don’t know.’

Every time I look in those big green eyes,

it gives my wheezy little heart a surprise.

All the mistakes that you make

come undone in the water.

They ride down to the ocean.

It feels good.​

Echo by Thomas Kinsella

​The Poetry Project sent me an e-mail this morning with this wonderful poem by Thomas Kinsella, and I thought I would share it with you. It is being paired with a video, called 'In a Hushed Requite' by Liam O'Callaghan, and it's a beautiful partnership. You can watch the video HERE.

And here's the poem:

Echo

by Thomas Kinsella

He cleared the thorns
from the broken gate,
and held her hand
through the heart of the wood
to the holy well.

They revealed their names
and told their tales
as they said that they would
on that distant day
when their love began.

And hand in hand
they turned to leave.
When she stopped and whispered
a final secret
down to the water.

Lifetimes piling up

The familiar corridors. Visiting mum in hospital, once again.

This time after what appears to have been a minor heart attack, last week. She was very under the weather and uncomfortable as we visited last Thursday afternoon, and I realise - with dull shame and throat-lump remorse - that she may have been having a heart attack right before our eyes, as we made jolly small talk over toasted sandwiches.

Now I wander up from reception, clutching a Get Well Soon card and seeing all of the anxious relatives and put-upon staff going from place to place, each locked in their own bubble of experience.

I pass one of the windows, giving out onto institutionalised shrubbery planting and plain faced buildings (the whole HOSPITAL under threat of closure) and shivering trees blown by a steely, icy easterly wind. There’s a stocky, white haired little woman wearing a purple padded coat, facing into the windowsill and sobbing into a mobile phone. Her shoulders heave up and down and breath leaves her as she weeps, unable to even speak to the person she has called.

My steps falter and every part of me wants to walk over and lay a hand on her shoulder, but she is so hunched forward into the windowframe, so… completely given over to the act of weeping, that it feels like an intrusion. And so I walk past this… grief, this loss, this enormous heavy-hearted sadness, and go about my business - as everyone else goes about theirs.

What is it about us that stops us from moving forward, from throwing our arms around each other in time of need? This little stocky woman with wiry white hair, in her neat purple windcheater. So obviously in need of comfort, and so alone in whatever is assailing her.

Downstairs as I leave the hospital, there is a painting on the wall - of houses piled up on houses, a depiction of a vertical jumble of eight dwellings, four pairs of houses teetering upwards under their burden, each with its own windows and doors looking out from under the weight of the house above.

Farewell to Chopper...

At CKCU FM station in Ottawa last summer with the legendary Chopper McKinnon, who sadly passed away last week.ANOTHER sad farewell this week, with the news that ‘Chopper’ McKinnon of CKCU in Ottawa has passed away. I made a new friend of Chopper - and Chris White, who co-hosted his radio show Canadian Spaces - during my visit to Canada last summer, and made a memorable appearance on his Saturday morning broadcast.

To be fair, Chopper had no idea who I was and he had been recommended to invite me on the show by some mutual friends. The programme has been broadcasting for 35 years, the longest running roots radio show in Canada.

Marilyn and Warren Major fortified me with fine coffee up in Chelsea and Warren drove me down into the city and out to Carleton University, where the radio station is situated, and we made our way through the quiet Saturday morning campus and up in the lift to a maze of rooms, many of them packed floor to ceiling with vinyl.

Chopper had seen it all, and as I tuned up he seemed at best ambivalent, but almost immediately on playing a few songs live in the studio, he seemed to brighten, and the banter began back and forth between he and I and fellow presenter Chris, and before I realised, it had become a 40-minute slot and a new connection, with people calling the station to say they had just bought tickets for that night’s show at the Black Sheep in Wakefield, after hearing the first few songs.

Warren and Marilyn told me that Chopper and Chris continued to play my songs in the weeks after I left, and I was looking forward to hooking up with them again on my next trip to Ottawa this summer.

Sadly, Chopper passed away on Thursday after a long battle with heart disease. He was 66. Those involved in Ottawa’s folk music scene are devastated to lose him.

Chopper’s life was one of those uniquely Canadian experiences - as the child of a member of the Canadian armed forces, he was born in Manitoba, but grew up in Germany, Ireland, England and El Paso, Texas, with the family finally settling in Ottawa in 1962. After spending some time in Winnipeg and in the Maritimes, he moved to Toronto and became involved in the city’s folk scene just as the legends of Canadian folk music – Joni Mitchell, Neil Young et al – were passing through the coffee houses of Yorkville.

Chopper started the Canadian Spaces show as a volunteer, and it became a firm Saturday morning fixture for thousands of Canadians listening in the Ottawa region and all over the country online. During the CKCU FM’s annual fundraising drive, Canadian Spaces consistently brought in the most money of all the shows on the station.

In 2000, to mark the 20^th anniversary of the show, the City of Ottawa declared a Chopper McKinnon Day. He would open the programme every Saturday by urging his listeners – who he called Space Cadets – to make a pot of their ‘favourite hot brown drink’ and enjoy some uninterrupted folk music.

The show focussed on Canadian music, so I was honoured to be included as an outsider in the programme schedule, and the broadcasts that followed. For that reason, I was awarded an honorary title, one which I’m very proud to maintain. He called me... a ‘Space Invader’.

(If you’d like to know more about CKCU FM, or read the tribute to Chopper from the station president,, visit http://www.ckcufm.com/

The station also has its own Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CKCUFM )

Sunday February 24 - last walk in Toronto

Yonge Street in Toronto – dirty snow from last week’s blizzard still piled up on the sidewalks. Outside the Eaton Centre, there’s a collection of Sunday afternoon preachers and attention grabbers, including a guy handing out ‘Black History’ newspapers and someone offering free information on Islam.

Further on, a gathering of pale women handing out vegetarian literature. They stand in front of pop-up displays of the meat/murder interface - grim abbatoir interiors, puddles of blood and swinging carcases on steel hooks. Nice. Thanks. On the pavement at their feet they have a little clutch of stuffed toy animals - pink piglets huddled together.

Beside them a raggedy-looking banjo player turns his back to the traffic and does his best with cold fingers.

Just at the corner, there’s a guy – young for a street preacher – with a trendy beard and beanie hat, exhorting us to give praise and thanks.

‘How many times do we give thanks to God?’ he asks. ‘The one who made… everything?’ And since this is Yonge Street in Toronto, it’s a river of busy human beings - and no-one stops to answer.

So far, so familiar. As I wait at the light, he takes a different tack. Spotting someone in the crowd with a cup, he blares through the megaphone: ‘Hmmm… That Starbuck’s sure looks tasty. Is it good? Yeah? Did you thank Jesus? Did you THANK GOD for your STARBUCK'S today?’

The light turns green and we move off and away. Beside me a couple of young girls catch my eye and we all snigger, our breath rising in silver clouds as we part ways at the corner. After half a block, even the sound of the banjo player is gone.